Disconnected Page 15

  It was dark now. I thought I ought not to be walking alone and decided to get a bus back into town. After that, I didn’t know. I saw a bus shelter ahead of me but its one pane of glass had been shattered into green crystal shards which lay in a heap nearby. Avoiding the glass and the litter scattered in the shelter, I stood a good few yards away, my eyes fixed in the distance, watching for a bus, hoping I wouldn’t have to wait too long.

  And then I saw a car. A Ford Escort. It was driving slowly, given that the road was almost empty. It came to a halt by me. My heart beat faster. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the same car that Jan had got into.

  I wasn’t scared, Taz. I was furious. And here was my chance to stand up for Jan, even if she would never find out.

  A man, shaven-headed, slitty-eyed, smelling of fag-ends and in last season’s football shirt, wound down his window and asked me if I wanted a lift.

  I reached over and with all the force I could muster I slapped him round the face.

  To Dave (5)

  You’re really solid, Dave. You must be, because you hardly flinched. You swore a bit, but then said, “So what’s that all about, then?”

  “Do I have to explain?” I shouted.

  “Yeah,” you said.

  So I did. “Because you’re filthy and exploitative. Because you’re so dysfunctional that you can’t get any decent woman to go to bed with you so you have to cruise round in this old wreck looking for girls who are young enough to be your daughters. You’re just utterly pathetic. I wouldn’t even waste my spit on you. You think just because you pay the kids you’ve squared up. But what if she was your own daughter? Have you thought of that? Your generation is so effing selfish, that’s what it is. You all mouth off about doing things for kids, educating them, buying things for them, but the truth is you only want what you want. You call it a business transaction to mask the fact you’re meeting your perverted needs. You’re irresponsible. You make kids like Jan do things and don’t think about it from their point of view. You think you’re such a tough guy just because of your beer gut and your motor but you’re worse than an animal. You’ve got a brain and you don’t use it. Violence is the only bloody language you understand.”

  And that was when I started kicking your car, Dave. It was such a relief as my foot hit the metal, the dull thuds, the rocking of the car. I didn’t care that my foot was red with pain. I needed to express what I felt.

  “Stop it,” you said to me. “You’ll wake the kids up.”

  Then I heard a long, sleepy wail from the back of the car. It puzzled me. You turned round to the back and my eyes followed yours. I saw a plump, angry, bleary-eyed toddler and a smaller baby who was still slumped over in sleep. For a moment I couldn’t take it in. I’d never heard of a kerb-crawler with his kids in the back. I watched you wriggle round and fish for a dummy that had fallen by the side of the baby seat. You gave it to the toddler who greedily stuck it in its mouth and stared at me as if I was from Outer Space.

  “I think you’ve made a mistake,” you said to me. “I asked you if you wanted a lift because I don’t think girls like you should be hanging around here at this time of night.”

  Slowly I realised you were telling the truth. Even then it occurred to me that there was something stupendously funny about the whole thing. You’d only wanted to help and I’d vented all my rage on you. I reddened with humiliation and would have walked away but you carried on talking.

  “These kids in the back are Linda’s,” you said. “Linda’s my sister. I’ve had them for the day while she was out with her fella. I’m taking them back now. Can I drop you somewhere?”

  It was the kindness in the tone of your voice. You made me see myself as you saw me, a young girl, scared and lonely, out by herself, in need of protection. And so I began to feel sorry for myself. And you know what happens when people feel sorry for themselves – they cry. All the confusion and fear of the last few weeks finally found expression. I sobbed and sobbed. You twisted round again to hunt around in a bag full of baby things and handed me a tissue with Winnie the Pooh on it. I blew my nose loudly.

  You got out of the car now, keeping your distance from me.

  “What’s your name?” you asked.

  “Catherine,” I said. “Catherine Holmes.”

  “Do you live round here?”

  “No.” I mentioned the suburb I lived in.

  “I’ll take you there if you like,” you said.

  I shook my head vehemently. I still didn’t know whether I wanted to go home. Then you introduced yourself. You said you weren’t in a hurry. You suggested I go and sit in the bus shelter and you’d sit with me until I felt better. You could keep an eye on the kids from there.

  I did what you said. There was something about the way you didn’t foist your help on me that made me want to accept it. I reckoned I was safe sitting there with traffic whizzing past. I wasn’t exactly alone with you. I trusted you, but on the other hand I’d been brought up not to talk to strangers and you were a stranger.

  “Who’s Jan?” you asked.

  And I explained. There was no need to hold back because you could have guessed anyway. I told my story in a jumble. That I’d discovered Jan was a prostitute. That I’d made friends with her because I thought she was lonely like me. I told you about Taz, who was so different from me. And how I’d started drinking. How I’d screwed up my exams, and couldn’t see the point of working any more. That I felt robbed of freedom in my life, and how everyone thought they knew what was best for me. That I’d stopped connecting with anyone or anything. It was strange sitting there and trying to be coherent, telling the story of my life to someone I’d never met before. But doing that began to create a sense of order, of inevitability.

  When I finished you were quiet for a bit. Then you asked, did I mind if you smoked. I shook my head. You lit up a Player’s.

  “It seems a shame, if you’ve got the brains, not to use them,” you said.

  “But what if I don’t want to?”

  “It’s your choice,” you said.

  You made it sound so simple but it wasn’t. I was beginning to see how one choice led to another. Jan chose to run away from home and then discovered that the only choice that lay open to her was to support herself by prostitution. A rational choice, but a potentially deadly one. Taz couldn’t choose to be straight or gay. Taz’s mum regretted her choice. How would I know if I was choosing right or not when everyone around me was screwing up?

  “I’ve failed all my exams,” I said.

  “You can take them again.” I knew that was true.

  “But then what?” I argued. “More exams, more pressure.”

  “What do you want to do?” you asked. “Like, for a career?”

  It was the old question, and I bridled. What did I want to be when I grew up? Only there was something this time that made me pause. You had said, what do you want to do? That sounded different. What did I want to do?

  “Help girls like Jan, I suppose. I don’t know how, though.”

  “You’d probably need qualifications,” you said.

  I nodded. But my mind was elsewhere, with Jan. I felt rotten, just leaving her like that. I needed to find her again. I couldn’t do that alone. The best thing would be to go home and ask my parents for help. I could take the humiliation involved. I couldn’t pretend it would be easy. I was still scared of their reaction but knew I could never, and would never want to, go back to being the good, obedient Catherine they loved. I would have to go home on my own terms. Those terms would have to include telling the truth, as far as it was ever possible to tell the truth.

  Stray thoughts played around in my mind. They needn’t pay for me to retake my ASs. I could go to the college. Perhaps a sixth-form college would suit me better. I could look into a vocational course. I had to be honest about the amount of pressure I could take. My parents would have to accept that, and I would have to take on board that it wouldn’t be easy for them, either, to accept that
I was fundamentally different from them. We all have our dreams and illusions: Jan, me, even my parents.

  I’d made a mess and it was up to me to clear it up. Just like it was brave of Jan to run away and I felt no pity for her, only a determination to give her something better, I realised it would be brave of me to go home. Perhaps, Dave, it was your common sense infecting me, I don’t know. Then you got up and went to check the kids. I watched you stick your head through the window and felt more embarrassed than ever at the way I’d misjudged you. You turned round then and said that you’d better get the kids back to Linda else she’d be fretting. You asked me again if I wanted a lift.

  The odd thing was, I hesitated. I hope you weren’t hurt by that. It was then the police car drew up, its blue lights flashing. Two young constables got out, a man and woman.

  “What’s going on here?” the policeman asked you. I noticed the cosh on his belt and his walkie-talkie radio. I saw the policewoman eyeing me. I realised things looked worse for you than they did for me so I stepped in to explain.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I was lost, and he stopped to help me. His name’s Dave. He’s been looking after his sister’s kids. I was on my way home. I was a bit upset, that was why he stopped.”

  You nodded. “So you’re going home now?” you asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The smile you gave me made me certain I was doing the right thing.

  The policewoman asked where I lived and I told her. They offered to drive me there. I accepted, rather relishing the idea of arriving home under police escort. I hadn’t quite given up wanting to shock my parents.

  I shook your hand, Dave, and asked for your name and address so I could write and thank you.

  “Let me know how you get on,” you said.

  “I will.”

  “It might do you good to write it all down,” you added.

  I told you I’d do that. You got into your car then and drove off. I noticed one of your rear lights wasn’t working, and so did the copper, but he didn’t say anything. I got into the back of the patrol car and realised I’d almost reached the end of my journey.

  But if I was going to write it all down, where would I start? And who would it be for? Because the problem with any story is that you tell it differently depending on who you think is reading it. I can’t write only for me, in the same way that I can’t live my life only for me. Other people matter. So I would have to think of the other people in my story too, and tell them what it looked like from where I was standing.

  If I tried to connect with them, maybe they could connect with me.

  If you enjoyed Disconnected, check out Blinded by the Light by Sherry Ashworth

  A gripping thriller about a teenage boy sucked into the dark world of a cult.

  Eighteen-year-old Joe is bored. Stuck at home after a bout of glandular fever, all his friends have left Manchester and gone to university, leaving Joe with nothing but his rather annoying family for company. When he meets Kate and Nick on the train, something about them appeals to him. So he goes to see them at their commune, a farm in rural Todmorden.

  Gradually, Joe’s life starts to make sense. With the White Ones he is wanted, and his life has a purpose. When he meets Bea at the farm, he really feels that his life is complete, and he decides to leave his family and live with the White Ones forever.

  But there is something sinister about Fletcher, the Todmorden White Ones leader. Fletcher seems obsessed with Joe – convinced that he is a Perfect, and someone to be venerated. A dramatic trip to the wildest reaches of Orkney will show Joe his destiny – and reveal some shocking truths.

  Buy the ebook here

  About the Author

  Sherry Ashworth was born in London. She started writing in 1989, and now has a total of eight adult novels and three young adult novels under her belt, including Disconnected, her first book for Collins. In a recent interview with amazon.co.uk, she lists Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Bill Bryson among her favourite authors. She now lives in Manchester with her husband and two teenage daughters. All of her books are set partly or wholly in Manchester, because, as she says, “of its vibrant working-class culture, its varied ethnic communities, and also because I know it so well.”

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